The Creation in Christ

All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
— John 1:3-4

The life of which I have spoken became light to men in the appearing of him in whom it came into being. The life became a light that men might see it, and themselves live by choosing that life also, by choosing so to live, such to be. There is always something deeper than anything said, something through which the central reality shines more or less plainly. Light itself is but the poor outside form of a deeper, better thing, namely, life. The life is Christ. The light too is Christ, but only the body of Christ. The life is Christ himself. The light is what we see and shall see in him; the life is what we may be in him. The obedient human God appeared as the obedient divine man, doing the works of his father—the things, that is, which his father did—doing them humbly before unfriendly brethren. The Son of the Father must take his own form in the substance of flesh, that he may be seen of men, and so become the light of men—not that men may have light, but that men may have life; that through the life that is in them, they may begin to hunger after the life of which they are capable, and which is essential to their being; that the life in them may long for him who is their life, and thirst for its own perfection, even as root and stem may thirst for the flower for whose sake, and through whose presence in them, they exist. That the child of God may become the son of God by beholding the Son, the life revealed in light; that the radiant heart of the Son of God may be the sunlight to his fellows; that the idea may be drawn out by the presence and daring of the Ideal—that Ideal, the perfect Son of the Father, was sent to his brethren.